The on-line museum of North America's independent department stores. The museum holds all sorts of information about classic department stores which either no longer exist, or are changed beyond recognition. A few of them are still with us, and provide an interesting connection to North America's retail past. The others are presented so that they may be properly remembered as a tangible part of the lives of their customers, shopping destinations where memories were often made.

Shopping Bags

THE DEPARTMENT STORE BAGThe paper bags used by department stores usually carried the store's logo and were designed using the signature color associated with a particular store. Large, handled shopping bags, which could be bought for, say, 15 cents from a dispenser near escalators, might be bigger versions of the standard bag, or, as in the case of Bloomingdale's, specially designed bags which were works of art in their own right.

Store shopping bags definitely held their own cachet. To walk about town carrying a bag from a certain store was at one time a real status symbol. One commentator on the internet stated that, before going home, they always went to the bargain basement, and purchased a small piece of jewelry for $.50, just to have a prestigious store's bag to carry home on the bus!

YOU ARE INVITED

The bags illustrated below are graphic reproductions made from various sources. If you can supply scans or photos of the bags of the stores included in the museum, from the period of 1960s through the mid-1970s, they will be considered for inclusion in the colorful bag exhibit.

I have 3 B.Altman shopping bags. One is plain brown with the store logo. The other two (one large and one small) are Christmas bags. They are light in color with a beautiful Christmas wreath of fruits, in the middle of which are the words "B. Altman's Williamsburg Christmas".

I wish there were a physical museum where the bags could be saved and used in displays.

Bloomingdales had (and have today also) the brown bag...big brown bag, medium brown bag and small brown bag. They used to have various colors (I think by size) and also had special promotional bags during the Fall. B Altman in the 70's had a white bag with their name in logo as either blue or maroon.Lord & Taylor had the red American rose (American signature)

I have what I think is an old GERTZ JAMAICA NEW YORK credit card? It is small, resembles a dog-tag, and is inserted into a brown leather case. OR maybe it is an old employee identification card. The card or dog-tag is made of metal. Can anymore tell me more about this item??

To Anonymous Re: Gertz credit card, Yes, what you have is an actual credit "plate" as they used to call it. We have one or two here maybe from Gertz, and A&S. It was considered fairly prestigious back then to sport one of these methods of payment. I do also have a fairly large collection of now-defunct department store shopping bags.

I have several paper shopping bags from Kaufmans Department Store in the Scranton, PA area which is now closed. The bags are various colors and holiday bags too. In addition I have a Wanamaker bag from the old Globe Store in Scranton, PA. The store was bought out by John Wanamaker but eventually closed up in the 80s.

I have a large collection -- about 200-- about 90% from Dayton's in Minneapolis-- most from the 1980's. Some very famous ones. All in great condition. Looking to sell. Know of any auction houses who may be interested? brittanderson@hotmail.com

I love the B.Altman's bag. It brought back warm, fuzzy memories of my grandmother. She always shopped there. We always teased her that she kept them in business! I remember going there with her many times. Thanks for the trip down memory lane!

I appreciate your help a lot - my goal is to get a "typical" bag design from every store I feature.

By the way, I am looking for an image of the San Angelo store from the time when it was actually Hemphill-Wells. I don't have access to the San Angelo newspapers, but perhaps some day I will, and will be able to find one.

Dear BAK: Thanks for the great website. If you are still interested, I have photos of the packaging designs my staff created for Macy's California in the early 1980s. Please advise how to forward them. My e-mail is richard@pacprint.com

I have a few bags and boxes from a Quincy Massachusetts department specialty store where i worked for six years in the 1960's. the store was Remicks of Quincy. it was owned and operated by Frank Remick, the Very Posh father of the actress Lee Remick. I will scan and send.Unique, upscale, very creative, elegant. It's bags were cherished and reused by many as sort of a badge of status. the boxes were not fold ups but were solid and beautiful, the logo appeared on the inside cover. which was white gloss with the scripted logo in metallic gold. the bottom was metallic gold and white stripes. you could identify Remicks by just the gold and white stripes. I wish there could be a history because it was truly a beautiful place ahead of it's competition. Magnificiant Mechanical Christmas Windows, hand made costumes based on a story like some are today. Advertising was illustrated in full page advertisements. Especially unique was an add, full page, published when big city department stores were opening branch stores, the add showed only a triple ball topiary tree with the caption,"Remicks, the store with no branches". coordinated with the add the store was decked out with topiary trees and live song birds in, antique cages, a springtime trim. anybody remember? richiedonahue@msn.com

I have a couple of pics of some A&S shopping bags from the 80's that I could send you they are mainly with the final logo that the store used and I also I have the final logo pic too if u need that the put into the A&S gallery

I have six brown paper bags from Bullock's Pasadena, CA. I believe the store closed in the mid-90's, the building was built in 1947 and is now in the historical register. Macy's is in the building now.

This is favorite site of mine over the years. My mom has hatboxes form the 50's and 60's from NYC stores...Bonwit Teller, Saks 5th Ave, Lord and Taylor, Oppenheim Collins, and Brooklyn' s great store Martin's...and the hats too. Those were the white glove days indeed.

I have the old Marshall Field's green plastic bags when I used to shop on Madison/State building in Chicago before it became Macy's. Anyone interested email me: chessforyoutoo@yahoo.com. You will not regret it!!! Collectors reach out as soon as possible.

Bags from BRAMSON inc in Chicago and suburbs were color coded by department. White bags and boxes were used for salon and better dress departments, but each other department had it's own color. Little Treasures, was the jewelry department ( olive green) Private Lives department was the lingerie section and their bag was pink. Sportswear departments were yellow and orange, etc. In the 70's a stripe bag using all the colors was adopted and used throughout the store. I will forward pics to bakgraphics to be posted on this sie.

I'm working on a TV show where our main character works at B. Altman in 1958. I'm trying to find out what the shopping bags looked like in the day and if they used any smaller bags for cosmetics purchases. Any research help would be greatly appreciated.

Jessie - I "eyeballed" the B. Altman bag above from the film "Fitzwilly" (1967) starring Dick Van Dyke. Usually department stores had a typical paper bag that they offered in a variety of sizes. The shelves below the cash register (often huge ones) is where they would store the bags, and an employee was usually in charge of circulating through the store with a cart and replenishing the bags at each register location. The handle shopping bags could be of an alternate design. I know that B. Altman had a Williamsburg style bag one Christmas, but that was out of the area you are searching. I just bought (eBay) a small 5" X 9" J. L. Hudson bag that could have been used for small cosmetics purchases. Perhaps a reader could help a bit with more particulars. Altman's "corporate" color appears to have been red, and though their credit cards were pink with a red logo, the bag in the film is a light blue - unless I am totally mistaken.-Bruce

I have a Christmas 1980 Bloomingdale's paper shopping bag with an exceptional Art Deco design on both sides. Vibrant colors of Red, Turquoise and Black on a white bag with the New York skyline running across the top and the words "Christmas 1980" printed in red. Anyone interested in acquiring this bag, please send an e-mail with the subject line saying "Shopping Bag" to marlee2@tampabay.rr.com. I will scan a photo to send to you.

About Me

Born in 1958 into an American family with deep Polish roots, I was encouraged at an early age to take education wherever I could get it. I was taken across the country as a child, by my first-generation American parents, to see the wonders of our continent, and several World's Fairs which my parents felt would be educational and fun for our family. All of these things have affected my life in so many ways since then. I achieved a couple of degrees in architecture, and attained licensure in 1990. My specialty in the field is creative design, for which I have received a number of awards and accolades. I am happily married for the second time. I experienced the sadness and pain of being a widower after my first wife passed away suddenly in 1996. I would not be telling the truth if I did not mention how central my Roman Catholic faith was in negotiating such a difficult time. It still is, in fact. I work for Fieldstone A&E and, my free time is spent, learning, researching, writing, cooking, traveling, taking photographs, ballroom dancing, and enjoying my relationship with my wife and family with whom I am extraordinarily close.